The Dark Lord's Apprentice

chapter 2: Freak

"Look Tony! There's Scar Head, doodling in his journal again! What a loser!"

"Yeah! And he's probably got his pet snake with him! Heard he actually thinks its talking back to him! What a freak!"

"Shh! Tony, Brad! I wouldn't be messing with the Potter. Haven't you heard the rumors? Bad things happen to boys who pick on him."

"Are you serious Kyle? You actually believe those fairy tales? That's just what they tell the newbies to scare them."

"No way man! You remember that Morgan kid? The one that was sent to the hospital with third degree burns? That was Potter's fault."

"But they said that he tripped and fell into a fire place."

"No man, I was there! One minute he is pushing Potter to the ground and calling him names, and the next Morgan's clothes are on fire! And I could have sworn Potter's eyes turned red!"

"Whatever, Kyle. I reckon you're as loony as Potter!"

Eight year old Harry Potter peaked over the pages of his notebook as he watched the three boys on the other side of the yard pointing fingers and stealing glances at him before they realized he could hear them and running off, pushing each other out of the way as they went. Sighing, he returned to the pages before him, which were covered in his rough pencil sketches of rain drops and whicker baskets. He was currently working on a drawing of an eye, coloring the iris a vibrant green with a colored pencil he swapped from the art supply closet down the hall from his room. The eye didn't look much different than the ones Harry had, but he drew this one more feminine, with light colored eye lashes and a delicate eyebrow. But what would stand out to any bystander about this eye was the obvious fear portrayed in its glance. For it was these frightened green eyes that would haunt Harry's dreams when he went to sleep. A woman's eyes, a blood curdling scream, and a flash of green light.

Harry shook his head to clear away the daydream as he finished the drawing and closed his notebook. He was sitting out in the backyard of Brixley's Home for Boys, his home for the past five years, with his back leaned up against the trunk of a dying oak tree and his knees pulled up to his chest. Setting the book aside, he rested his forehead against his knees, making sure not to smash his glasses into his face in the process. He tried to block out the ever present shouts and squeals of the other boys in the yard by covering his head with his arms. He didn't know how much more of this racket he could take today.

He suddenly felt a slight constriction around his throat; a warm and scaly presence making its way around his neck before finally coming to rest under the collar of his shirt. Lifting his head slowly as to not dislodge the creature, he brought his fingers up to pet the back of his companion.

"Good afternoon Daisy."

"Greetings, Harry. You looked rather blue today so I thought I would check up on you."

Harry smiled as he continued to pet the snake, his only friend in this hell hole of an orphanage. "I'm OK, I suppose. It seems the rumor mill decided to dredge up that story of how I accidently lit up that blond git's clothing three years ago."

Harry could feel the snake's head nod against his throat as she tightened her body around his neck gently into what Harry had learn to interpret as a hug from the serpent. "At least they seemed to learn to leave you alone now."

"True," He agreed. He remembered the day when the blond boy they called Morgan came into the lounge room that Harry had been in, sitting in an arm chair drawing in his journal. The boy pulled Harry from his chair by the front of his shirt and threw him across the room, sending him sliding across the carpet and knocking his glasses off in the process. The boy started calling him names not unlike the ones the boys called him earlier today, things like 'scar head' and 'loser' and 'freak'. Resituating his glasses on his nose, Harry had stood up and warned the boy to leave him alone or else. "Or else what, freak? Are you gonna pencil me to death? Strike me dead with that lightning bolt on your head?" That's when Harry had wished that he could teach the boy a lesson, something to stop his relentless bullying. Then in a blink of an eye, Morgan's shirt burst into flames, and then his pants. After the Home officials distinguished the boy and sent him to the hospital, they questioned Harry about the situation, to which Harry gave the only story he could think of: they were messing around and Morgan tripped on the rug and fell back into the fireplace. They seemed to have bought the story, for he never got in trouble for it and Morgan was sent to another home in order to 'avoid exposing him to memories of his accident'. Harry didn't realize the young Kyle was in the room too, though due to his young age no one believed what he said, thus the birth of the topic of today's rumor mill.

Though Harry never understood how the flames ended up on Morgan, he was a bit glad it happened; it seemed to have lessened the daily torment he would get daily from the other boys in the home. Weird things always seemed to happen around Harry, especially if he was particularly scared or angry. Glasses and dinnerware would crack and break on its own, flowers would wilt and die in his presence, his tormenters would all of a sudden break out in an odd case of hives or warts when beating him up.

And the rumors only got worse after he met Daisy the following summer. He had been hiding in a bush to get away from an older boy when he felt something slither across his hand.

"AAHH! What was that?"

"Relax human, its just me, your run-of-the-mill garden snake."

"Wait, did you say something?!?"

"Wait, you can understand me?!!"

From that day on, Daisy had been his one and only companion. Someone who would listen to his feelings and didn't think it was weird that odd things happened around him. He could understand and talk to snakes, after all. How more odd could something be in comparison?

"Come on, Daisy. Lets see if we can escape the insane noise by hanging in my room."

"Lead the way, darling. I'm gonna continue to hitchhike on you. Less of a chance of getting stepped on."

"Fair enough."

-----

Making his way down the damp hallways of the Home, Harry carried his notebook and drawing supplies in one hand while petting Daisy's back with the other. He was whispering her a nursery rhyme he remembered learning when he was first brought here, since the Home directors try to teach the basics to the toddlers before letting them run free with the older boys by the age of four. Daisy loved when he whispered to her nursery rhymes. Though come to think of it, him mumbling gibberish words into the collar of his shirt could be fueling a few of the rumors the other boys mentioned.

As he sung "baa baa black sheep" to Daisy, he reached his room door and rolled the door knob with his forearm to open the door. Distracted by the rhyme, he managed to enter the room, bumped the door shut with his hip, and begin to cross to the room to his bed before noticing the man standing in the middle of his room.

The drawing supplies fell to the floor as Harry scrambled back in panic towards the door, staring at the man. "Who the hell are you?"

"They call me Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter. and I've come to kill you."